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Camera Lucida

By

Bernard-Henri Levy

Updated Aug. 9, 2004 12:01 a.m. ET

The first time I saw Henri Cartier-Bresson was in 1989, in Paris, during a street demonstration against the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.

I can still see him, lost in the crowd, very tall, very elegant, blue eyes, red scarf, the very silhouette of a bird of prey, dreaming, grouching, his indignation contained, the dry passion of an old anarchist-on-a-tightrope.